5 Working with styles and effects

This chapter shows you how to work with the styles you have created within your documents.

It shows you how to use the Regions editor to manage the number of styles you have used, and to remove styles from areas or text.

It provides hints and tips for working with styles and using effects.

It contains sections on:

Cell and text styles

What are styles?

Styles are sets of choices which determine the appearance and layout of numbers, text cells, rows and dates within your worksheet. Aspects of style include: the margins of each cell; the typeface used, its size, colour and any special attributes applied to it; and the alignment of figures within a cell. These are referred to in the following sections as attributes.

Style tool button To see the list of styles available for use in any worksheet document, click the Style button in the toolbar (or choose Styles from the Style menu). You will see a dialogue box containing a list similar to this:

Styles provide a mechanism for changing the look of a worksheet quickly and easily. All styles contained in the worksheet are listed in the Style selector; to add a style to part of a worksheet, simply select it, click the Style tool button on the toolbar, select the preferred style from the list and click Apply.

Styles can quickly be changed; any changes made will be applied to all occurrences of that style within the worksheet.

Using styles can save you a lot of time in formatting your worksheets, as well as ensuring consistency. For example, you can define a Totals style, and use it to highlight all totals within your worksheet. If the Totals style uses a different typeface, in a different size, and with extra spacing beneath compared to the style used for ordinary cells, the ability to apply a style with a couple of clicks can save you a lot of time even in short documents.

Toolbar buttons and effects

Changes you make to the look of data using the bold, italic, and justification buttons on the toolbar are applied as effects and don't change the underlying style applied to the area.

It is worth spending some time learning to use the Style and Effects dialogue boxes. If you haven't worked through the tutorials in the Getting Started Guide, you should do so. The documents supplied in the Examples directory all contain a variety of styles and show different ways that styles and effects can be used.

Effects

Effects are virtually identical to styles and you use them to change the appearance of your document in exactly the same way. The difference is that effects do not have names and so are applied once only. They are useful for quick one-off changes but less so if you want to be able to make consistent changes to a large worksheet or document.

If you make changes to the ruler or toolbar settings while any cells are selected, the changes will be applied to them as an effect.

If no cells are selected:

Applying effects

The Effects tool button on the toolbar (and the Effects option on the Style menu) enable you to alter one or more attributes and apply the new settings to the selected area of text. To do this:

  1. Select the area of text you want to apply effects to.
  2. Effects tool button Click the Effects button (or choose Effects from the Style menu).
  3. The Effects dialogue box will appear. It is like the Style dialogue box for the style currently applied to the area you have selected; but all the entries are greyed out until you click on the attribute you want to change.
  4. Click on the entry for the attributes you want to change, and make the required changes as if editing a named style.
  5. Click Apply in the dialogue box.
  6. The attributes you have chosen will be applied to the selected area.

The style list

All styles which exist within your document are shown in the style list.

All documents have several styles to start with, before you start editing and creating additional styles. These are the styles defined in the template from which the document was created.

Special styles

When you open a new document it already contains several styles which are predefined in the template on which the document is based. Some of these styles have special purposes and you cannot set one up yourself.

Base style

The base style of the document behaves slightly differently from other styles. When you examine its contents, you will see that the buttons, which are normally red to show that an area is selected, are grey and cannot be switched off.

Current cell

All documents created as sheets in Fireworkz contain a current cell style. This style is used in tables and worksheets to show the cell which is currently selected, that is where any data or formula entered on the editing line will appear on the sheet when you press Return↵.

The default current cell style is that a border appears around the cell, and that the cell has a grey background. You can, of course, edit the style of the cell so that a different colour is used for its contents, and so on.

Most of the time you wouldn't want a current cell style in a document which was mostly text, as you would have an irritating border around the paragraph you were typing.

Adding a current cell style

A current cell style is not automatically added to a document based on a letter template. An easy way to add one is to:

  1. Open a document containing a current cell style.
  2. Choose Save template from the File menu.
  3. Select Style and click on the Current cell style in the list of styles.
  4. Drag the template icon on to the document to which you wish to add it.
  5. That document will now have a current cell style.

You will also find Current Cell style templates in the Examples directory.

Deleting styles

You can remove a style from the style list by selecting it from the style list and clicking the button marked Delete.

If the style is in use in the document, you will see a dialogue box. This gives you the option of removing the style wherever it has been applied in the document, as well as from the style list. Click OK to confirm this, or Cancel to cancel the deletion of the style.

Do not delete the BaseStyle from the document. If you do this, you will find it difficult to edit or reformat the document.

Working with styles

Effective use of the Style editor can make your work with Fireworkz much more productive.

Naming your styles

You can give your styles any name you like. However, it is a good idea to make the style names refer to the purpose of the style in the document rather than the actual features of the style. This means that you could change the look of all your second level headings, and the style name would still make sense.

Applying styles

There are two main ways you can apply existing styles. You can either apply a style to text or numbers you have already entered, or you can apply styles to blank cells so that when you type in data it appears in the format and style you want.

To apply a style to the contents of one or more cells:

  1. Select the cells to which you wish to apply the style.
  2. Style tool button Click the Style tool button on the toolbar.
  3. Choose the style you want from the list and click Apply.
  4. Alternatively, if you have defined control key short cuts, you can enter the style's control key short cut.

Layering styles

There are many different attributes which can be defined as part of a style. However, they do not all have to be defined in each style, and there are advantages to defining fewer rather than more attributes for each style.

If you define only some attributes for each style, you can apply more than one style to the same text. For example, you might want a currency style, with the number format including a £ sign, and a Totals style, which highlighted the contents of the cell in bold. Defining these as separate styles would give you increased flexibility; rather than having to create a separate style for each combination of attributes, you can simple apply several styles to the same cell.

Non-text style attributes, such as number and date formats, background colours and table grid information, should always be defined separately from text styles. This gives you a great deal more flexibility in changing the design without affecting the text it contains.

The region editor

The region editor is a tool for managing styles and effects which have been applied to the text in your documents. It allows you to:

To see the styles and effects applied to any text, you can use the region editor. This also enables you to remove any styles or effects from an area, and to see how the layering of styles affects the look of the document content at any point.

The style region editor tells you the name of styles applied to an area, and gives details of effects such as bold, italic, grids and boxes. This information will appear in the status line.

To use the style region editor:

  1. Place the caret in the area you want to look at.
  2. Choose the Regions option from the Style menu. The Region dialogue box will appear, and the name of the style or attributes set by the effect most recently applied to the area will be shown on the status line.
  3. To look at other styles and effects applied to the area, click the In button in the Region dialogue box. You can move inwards as far as the base style of the document. As you move in, the selection will change to show you the area to which the style named or effects shown in the status line is applied.
  4. Click the Out button to move back out through the layers of styles.

Removing styles and effects

Use the Region editor to remove applied styles or effects from a selected area of the worksheet.

  1. Select the area you want to alter.
  2. Choose the Regions option from the Style menu.
  3. Move in or out until you see the style or effect you want to change in the status line.
  4. Click on Remove in the Region dialogue box.
  5. The style or effect will be removed from your selected area.

If you have added many styles to a worksheet and are finding it over-complicated, you can use this option to remove styles which have become redundant from areas of the worksheet.